Berbatov's agent denies Old Trafford exit

Dimitar Berbatov’s agent has rubbished reports that the Bulgarian striker will leave Manchester United during the January transfer window.

The former Spurs player appeared to have finally found his feet at Old Trafford scoring six goals in his first five games, including a hat-trick against Liverpool in September.

However, Berbatov has failed to find the back of the net since then and there have been rumours that the 29-year-old will be offered to Real Madrid as part of a deal to bring Karim Benzema to Old Trafford.

Emil Dantchev, the player’s agent, has denied this claim: ‘There's nothing to say. He will stay in Manchester. All the talk of a move is false.’

United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has accepted some of the responsibility for Berbatov’s loss of form: ‘In fairness to Dimitar's situation we have been changing the strikers quite a lot recently. I think I have to accept the responsibility for changing it too much.’

‘Now we are going to have to be looking at getting consistency of performance. We have a lot of good young striker options who have played in a lot of games recently, but hopefully we can get Wayne [Rooney] back to his best and Dimitar is suited to playing with Wayne.’

Ferguson continued: ‘I don't think it has taken Dimitar back to square one. In our game it is very difficult to play well every week. It is a competitive league we are in. You see the results of this season and that tells you something.’

‘It is very competitive so getting the consistency of performance from front players is very difficult. You look around at other clubs and they are finding that much the same as us.’